Thursday, April 3, 2008

Rodney Bowling is scamming again

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of Rodney Bowling, he appears again.
As you may recall, Bowling is the Cleveland scam artist who convinced hundreds of girls to sign up for a model search that never actually happened, and persuaded dozens of restaurateurs to buy air time for a cable food network show that was never taped...
In August, we learned his new career consisted of soliciting sales leads for a chance to win a Hummer that he wasn’t actually giving away.
And now he’s back, heading up a scheme to convince people to sell pre-paid legal services that also don’t exist. Until last month, Bowling was using space at the Tri-C Corporate campus to run his new business, and hired on a few new associates. The new assistants, including Shonte Sanders, began to realize things were a little fishy when Bowling asked the women to buy the pens and papers and folders themselves. He would, of course, reimburse them.
Never happened. And huge shock here -- both of their paychecks bounced.
“He seemed like a trustworthy guy at first,” Sanders says. “He told is how he’d done big business in Detroit and how he had such an extravagant lifestyle, always taking trips to Beverly Hills and stuff. It sounded so impressive.” But then they went to lunch and Sanders had to pick up the bill because Bowling had no cash.
Sanders quit in February, and is still due over $1,000 from Bowling. “It’s like I worked for a month for free,” she complains. Last month, Bowling was kicked out of his Tri-C office.
He now has a listing on Craigslist, advertising an open administrative post. – Rebecca Meiser